Back in 1959, President Eisenhower and Soviet Premier Khrushchev took a break from their summit and walked in the woods around Camp David. Khrushchev, in his memoirs, relates a conversation in which the president complains of how hard it is to resist the military’s demands for more money. Military leaders, said Eisenhower, invariably insist the US will fall behind the Soviet Union unless he gives them the money for this or that weapon system. “They keep grabbing for more, and I keep giving it to them.” He asked Khrushchev if that was also the case in the USSR. “It’s just the same,” said Khrushchev, who went on to describe virtually the same script. “Yes,” said the president, “that’s what I thought.”

Congress members are very much a part of the military-industrial complex, which is why someone (Tom Hayden?) long ago suggested that the more accurate term is MAGIC: the military-academic-governmental-industrial complex. Most people elected to Congress, and certainly any among them who serve on the armed services committee of either house, think two things when it comes to national security: the more weapons produced, the more secure we are; and the more money allocated to “national defense,” the better. These folks never met a weapons system they didn’t like. And when, in relatively lean times, they have to decide between social well-being and the Pentagon’s wish list, well, they don’t have to think twice.

These days Congress members, mainly on the Republican side, are busy finding clever ways to hide stuffing the Pentagon’s stocking with strategically senseless, duplicative, exceedingly expensive weapons and related items. Remember sequestration in 2013? It was supposed to cap military and other spending in order to help bring the overall budget back to balance. Clearly, in the minds of the military-firsters, this effort was never meant to apply to the Pentagon, as evidenced by the much larger budget hit that social welfare programs took compared with the military, and by the little publicized Overseas Contingency Operations fund, which is not subject to sequestration. Yes, military spending has gone down over the last three years (see the chart below); but at over $600 billion (not counting veterans’ benefits and interest on the national debt from past wars), it’s around 54 percent of all US government discretionary spending and still close to 40 percent of global military spending.

Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer and Executive Director of The Council for the National Interest, discusses the 48 year anniversary of the deliberate Israeli attack on the USS Liberty that killed 34 American sailors, marines and civilian personnel.

We all remember how, in early June, President Putin announced that Russia would deploy more than 40 new ICBMs “able to overcome even the most technically advanced anti-missile defense systems.”

Oh dear; the Pentagon and their European minions have been freaking out on overdrive ever since.

First was NATO Secretary-General, Norwegian figurehead Jens Stoltenberg, who condemned it as “nuclear saber rattling.”

Then there’s Lt. Gen. Stephen Wilson, the head of US Global Air Strike Command – as in the man responsible for US ICBMs and nuclear bombers – at a recent briefing in London; “[They’ve] annexed a country, changing international borders, raising rhetoric unlike we’ve heard since the cold war times…”

That set up the stage for the required Nazi parallel; “Some of the actions by Russia recently we haven’t seen since the 1930s, when whole countries were annexed and borders were changed by decree.”

At His Masters Voice’s command, the EU duly extended economic sanctions against Russia.And right on cue, Pentagon supremo Ashton Carter, out of Berlin, declared that NATO must stand up against – what else – “Russian aggression” and “their attempts to re-establish a Soviet-era sphere of influence.”

Bets are off on what this huffin’ and puffin’ is all about. It could be about Russia daring to build a whole country close to so many NATO bases. It could be about a bunch of nutters itching to start a war on European soil to ultimately “liberate” all that precious oil, gas and minerals from Russia and the Central Asian “stans”.

Unfortunately, the whole thing is deadly serious.

Get your tickets for the next NATO movie

Vast desolate tracts of US ‘Think Tankland’ at least admit that this is partly about the exceptionalist imperative to prevent “the rise of a hegemon in Eurasia.” Well, they’re not only “partly” but totally wrong, because for Russia – and China – the name of the game is Eurasia integration through trade and commerce.

That condemns the “pivoting to Asia”, for the moment, to the rhetorical dustbin. For the self-described “Don’t Do Stupid Stuff” Obama administration – and the Pentagon – the name of the game is to solidify a New Iron Curtain from the Baltics to the Black Sea and cut off Russia from Europe.

So it’s no surprise that in early June, the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment, in itself a think tank, hired another think tank, the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) to churn out – what else – a bunch of war games.

CEPA happens to be directed by A. Wess Mitchell, a former adviser to former Republican presidential candidate and master of vapidity Mitt Romney. Mitchell – who sounds like he flunked history in third grade – qualifies Russia as a new Carthage; “a sullen, punitive power determined to wage a vengeful foreign policy to overturn the system that it blames for the loss of its former greatness.”

Russian intelligence is very much aware of all these US maneuvers.So it’s absolutely no wonder Putin keeps coming back to NATO’s obsession in building a missile defense system in Europe right at Russia’s western borderlands; “It is NATO that is moving towards our border and we aren’t moving anywhere.”

NATO, meanwhile, gets ready for its next super production; Trident Juncture 2015, the largest NATO exercise after the end of the Cold War, to happen in Italy, Spain and Portugal from September 28 to November 6, with land, air and naval and special forces units of 33 countries (28 NATO plus five allies).

NATO spins it as a “high visibility and credibility” show testing its “Response Force” of 30,000 troops. And this is not only about Russia, or as a rehearsal in pre-positioning enough heavy weapons for 5,000 soldiers in Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary.

It’s also about Africa, and the symbiosis NATO/AFRICOM (remember the “liberation” of Libya?) NATO Supreme Commander Gen. Breedhate, sorry, Breedlove, bragged, on the record, that, “the members of NATO will play a big role in North Africa, the Sahel and sub-Saharan Africa.”

The White House recently announced that Obama has approved a plan to send 450 new troops into Iraq to fight ISIS. These “troops” aren’t ground troops, but instead are going in an adviser role to assist the Iraqi military.

Now, everyone who believes that please, go stand on your head.

It’s been four years since the US “officially” pulled their ground troops out of Iraq, yet CNN reports that, “There are currently 3,050 U.S. forces in Iraq – with 2,250 of them devoted to supporting Iraqi security forces, 800 protecting US personnel and facilities, 450 training Iraqi troops and 200 in advising and assisting roles.”

Does it sound like war has ended in Iraq for the US military? Does it sound like the taxpayer is all of the sudden not going to have their money stolen to benefit the military-industrial complex? Does it sound like, in such a war torn country (thanks in no small part to the US), that these new 450 soldiers will really have much of a choice in whether they’re combat troops or not?

I am also unsure how it could even be tracked whether these troops stay in their “adviser” role. Maybe some decide to go off and shoot some folks anyway. How would we know? Or maybe there will be some who are de facto turned into ground troops because of the unpredictability of war torn countries. There are many questions about unaccountability that need to be answered.

To top it off, the National Journal points out that this announcement comes only two days after Obama admitted that he has no “complete strategy” for training Iraqi forces in fighting ISIS. So why are more troops being sent in?

Obama’s reasoning in the past for not sending in more explicit ground troops is that he does not want to do what the Iraqis need to do for themselves. If that’s the case, then why send advisers?

Edward Griffin, author of “The Creature from Jekyll Island,” says the global monetary system is out of control. Griffin contends, “There is nothing that can be done about it. This thing is a runaway machine. I would feel much better if these political figures would say hey, this is out of our control right now. We need a substantial change in the system. . . . We need more honesty. People have to stand up and say we are in for a tough time. There is no easy way out of this. We are in for a tough time. Hang on to your seatbelts. We are coming into the rapids now. We need that kind of honesty, but we are not getting it because most of these guys and gals in Washington are thinking well, it’s going to be bad, but at least I’m in a good spot. They are more worried about themselves and their families than they are worried about the nation.”

What will the next financial calamity look like to the man on the street? Griffin explains, “The main mechanism that people will feel most directly will be the loss of value or purchasing power for their currency. The dollar will buy less and less and less as it has been doing, but it’s been sort of gradual and we get used to it. . . . When you look at the real cost of living, inflation is really pretty high now, but you haven’t seen anything yet compared to when the rest of the world does what it is now saying it is going to do. They are going to stop using the Federal Reserve Note as the international reserve currency. When they stop that, then we have no place to get rid of all these extra dollars we make up in the digital printing press. . . . When that stops, all those trillions and trillions of dollars that we have put overseas will come back to us because the people who hold them, like China for example, will say we can’t use these. Then they will use them to buy up anything they can here. They’ll buy our products . . . but they’ll also buy up our stocks and bonds and real estate. They’ll buy up our politicians or anything else that is for sale to get rid of those dollars as quickly as possible. When that happens, all of these dollars will be flooding through our economy. You could say the price of a loaf of bread will be $100 and that is the kind of thing we will see, and it may be even worse. It will be just like we saw in Zimbabwe or Germany in the Weimar Republic. These things happen in history . . . and the United States is not exempt of the laws of economics. It is going to happen here . . . and the main form of it will be the loss of purchasing power and hyperinflation. . . . This means the destruction of a working economy. Unemployment will be rampant. People, unfortunately, will turn to the government who caused the problem and say . . . won’t you please save us.”

On war, Griffin contends, “War is primarily a psychological weapon. The threat of war, the fear of war, that is more useful to governments than actual war. Machiavelli said years ago said that the best way to keep people content and overlook the miseries they have to suffer under their own governments is to embroil the people in wars or rumors of wars. So, they would be so afraid of an enemy that they would tolerate any insult to their liberties as a means of preventing this thing they dread so much. That is certainly the prime operative today. That is the prime directive today of all governments. They love to keep their people, their people in a state of fear. Most governments today look at their own populations as the enemy, not the populations of other countries. They think their own populations need to be controlled and dominated to sustain their power.”

All is not lost according to Griffin, and it starts with something he calls “The Creed of Freedom.” Griffin is working on global solutions to this massive bad leadership problem.

Being a writer who attempts to discern and to tell the truth is both encouraging and discouraging. It is encouraging that some of you make monthly donations in support of the website as are your written appreciations I receive in emails. Many have written that I have rescued them from their existence in The Matrix, which is my purpose.

Discouragement comes from the ignorant diatribes that arrive in emails. I never fail to be amazed at the hate-filled ignorance of many Americans. Every time I read emails, I experience hope on one hand and despair on the other.

As I have written previously, many Americans want to hear what they have been inculcated to expect to hear. They are brainwashed, incapable of thought or evaluating evidence. If they don’t hear what they have been trained to hear, they respond with denunciations. To see so many Americans totally incapable of thought and reason makes me question the point of my efforts. Then I remember Margaret Mead’s statement that it only takes a few determined people to change the world.

In the 21st century, the neoconservatives have been those people. They have changed the world for the worst. Now we must change it for the better.

As Morpheus tells Neo: “The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you’re inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it.”

In the film, Neo is The One who has powers to defeat the Agents who protect The Matrix, but I am just an ordinary person although with extraordinary experience. The Agents who protect Washington’s Matrix are focusing on truth-tellers. The alleged library of Osama bin Laden contains many of Washington’s critics. Washington’s release of the fabricated bin Laden library suggests that Washington intends to discredit its critics by associating them with bin Laden, and failing that to deal with critics in more harsh fashion.

It is discouraging that many readers are incapable of seeing the difference between the Cold War, non-jobs-offshoring days of the Reagan presidency and neoconservative Washington’s post-Reagan assault on the economic and political rights and civil liberties of the American people and on the lives and prospects of millions of people via war or sanctions in eleven countries (Serbia, Ukraine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Iran, and Russia).

I have explained so many times that Reagan’s two goals were to end stagflation and the Cold War. In order to end stagnation, Reagan’s administration changed US fiscal and monetary policy. Reagan did not change the policies in order to enrich the rich. He threatened the Soviets with a military buildup and imaginary weapons systems such as Star Wars that he could not produce, and he prevented the success of left-wing political takeovers in “America’s sphere of influence” in order to make the point to the Soviets that there would be no further expansion of Soviet influence. This was done in order to bring the Soviets to an agreement to end the Cold War. Reagan was advised, probably correctly, that hardliners would not allow Gorbachev to agree to an end of the Cold War if left-wing governments were proliferating in Washington’s sphere of influence.

Reformist governments in Granada and Nicaragua were not threats to the US. They were stymied, although Nicaragua more or less prevailed in the end, in order to send a message to the Soviets. Reagan believed that ending the Cold War and the threat of nuclear armageddon was more important than Grenada and Nicaragua’s left-wing, possibly Marxist, governments.

The air traffic control strike was not an attempt by Reagan to break the unions. Reagan was a union member and he was elected President with union votes. The air controller strike was illegal. It was done, on bad advice, to test Reagan and if he folded to break his presidency before it could get underway. This was completely obvious. No president, least of all Reagan, is going to throw away his chance to stop stagflation and the Cold War for the sake of an illegal strike by air traffic controllers.

With their ignorance of the Reagan years, how can Americans possibly understand the difference between 20th century America, which was far from perfect, and the 21st century neoconized and deregulated America in which the American Empire, both political and economic, is pursued universally at the expense of everyone except the One Percent?

Ronald Reagan did not claim the power to ignore habeas corpus and to detain US citizens indefinitely without due process of law. This crime was the achievement of America’s first 21st century president, George W. Bush.

Ronald Reagan did not claim the power to assassinate US citizens on suspicion alone without evidence or due process of law. This crime was the achievement of America’s First Black President, Obama.

The American left-wing is impotent, because it cannot recognize the rise of American Caesars beginning with Bill Clinton’s second term. Under George W. Bush and Obama, the accountability of the executive branch to law ceased to exist.

It was Bill Clinton who deregulated the US financial system, but hardly any Americans understand that. Many are prepared to put Clinton’s wife into the presidency completely unaware that they would be furthering the One Percent’s assault on their economic existence. I do not intend to imply that the Republicans have a candidate who would do any different.

I am not Neo. Neither is Edward Snowden, William Binney, Julian Assange, Glenn Greenwald, John Pilger, Chris Hedges, Noam Chomsky, Michel Chossudovsky, or any of the other writers who attempt to speak the truth. Against our voices are arrayed a massive number of voices of fools, well paid Internet trolls, the presstitute Western print and TV media and NPR.

It is such an unequal fight that I wonder at my participation. My participation has reduced my income and my social acceptance in influential circles. Try to imagine a former Wall Street Journal editor and Assistant Secretary of the Treasury who cannot publish in the mainstream media or appear on a TV program, except to be denounced in absentia.

Consider the oddity of truth-tellers ostracized while presstitutes like Thomas Friedman rake in large speaking fees for lying for the Establishment. Lies told by newspapers and TV “news” programs, spoon-fed stories supported with money by Washington and vested interests, comprise the news, while truth is ridiculed as “conspiracy theory” and “Putin apologetics.”

The older you become the more you realize how little of your life is left. Is it a good decision to use one’s remaining time attempting to bring truth to people, the majority of whom are incapable of comprehending it?

As I say each quarter, this is your site. It will continue as long as you support it. As long as you have hope, I have hope. It only takes a few determined people.

“Any time you can take the censors out of the equation and speak directly to the people you want to reach, the more control you have over the situation and the stronger the impact of your message will be.” — Andrew Steele

By AE911Truth Staff
June 7, 2015
Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth

More than 1,200 packets containing the research papers of experts on the evidence for the controlled demolition of the World Trade Center were mailed to the architectural and engineering faculties of four Ivy League schools and a “public Ivy” university in a massive outreach campaign last winter, according to AE911Truth Public Relations Manager Andrew Steele, who spearheaded the effort.

Thanks to a grant from a generous AE911Truth donor, every architecture and engineering professor at Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, Yale University, and the University of Virginia received a packet that included a personal cover letter from AE911Truth founder Richard Gage, an introductory article about AE911Truth, an article quoting structural engineers who make the case for controlled demolition, a DVD of the documentary 9/11 Explosive Evidence: Experts Speak Out, and a CD filled with other pertinent videos and peer-reviewed papers by 9/11 Truth Movement scholars.

Originally, Steele attempted to reach out to the faculty and students of all departments of these institutions through inserts in their student newspapers. But the editorial bodies of three out of the four initially-targeted universities denied that request. (Steele added a fifth school, the University of the Virginia, to the list after making the decision to the send the packets; UVA was never contacted about the running the inserts.)

Only one of the universities — Cornell — allowed AE911Truth to publish its brochure in the campus paper, The Cornell Daily Sun.

The BDS movement is now drawing official opposition from Tel Aviv and its American allies.

By Philip Giraldi
June 18, 2015
The American Conservative

Back in the 1980s I had a friend who was, like me, a CIA Case Officer. He came from a German-Jewish family that had immigrated to the United States in 1933 and, though non-practicing in religion, he was a devoted reader of Commentary. At that time Commentary was the house organ for what we now would describe as a neoconservative foreign policy, a fringe viewpoint that had not yet captured the Republican Party.

One day my colleague approached me and began to rant and rave about the movie “Gandhi.” He had been reading about the film in Commentary and told me that it was historically inaccurate and little more than a puff piece that had been funded by the Indian government. Lacking any particularly insight into the matter I made agreeable noises and left it at that, but it occurred to me that there was something more to the story.

Today I understand what the problem was. Gandhi forced a seemingly unassailable imperial occupying power to pull up stakes and go home. And he did it through nonviolence. Commentary clearly understood that if the Palestinians were to copy Gandhi it would create possibly insurmountable difficulties for the Israeli occupation, which was even then beginning to build permanent settlements for 100,000 settlers in East Jerusalem, on the West Bank and the Golan Heights, as well as in Gaza. It could also expose Israel’s denial of basic human rights to many of the Palestinians under its control.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and numerous other friends of Israel have essentially declared war on the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions Movement (BDS), which one might describe as the Palestinian version of Gandhi, as it is nonviolent and nonconfrontational. BDS essentially seeks to bring about change through exposing the immorality of the status quo and even challenging the legitimacy of the Israeli state, which was founded by dispossessing the Palestinians. BDS was organized in 2005 and has three stated objectives: ending the Israeli occupation, granting Arab Israelis full citizenship rights, and respecting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes. The third demand, the most contentious, is generally conceded to be a bargaining chip, expected to be subsumed into an agreement that would produce two contiguous states, which the BDS organizers explicitly support.